The killing a year ago sparked a justified, constructive anger at racial injustice that is still felt around the world
It was all supposed to blow over in a few days. Thomas Jefferson once said of Black Americans that “their griefs are transient”. These were people who lived life with a more muted emotional palette than everybody else. As their pain was fickle and their depths of feeling shallow, their lives were more expendable than others’. An unemployed Black American in his mid-40s with a criminal record, George Floyd’s life wasn’t supposed to add up to much, especially in our age of mass distraction. Perhaps his name would trend on Twitter for a while. Perhaps there would be a handful of marches. But inevitably, we would soon all move on to more important matters. We always do.
After all, it is difficult to imagine a more mundane police encounter than the one facing the officers who confronted Floyd for apparently buying cigarettes with a counterfeit $20 bill a year ago. This is not a scenario that should produce a world-changing event. And it wouldn’t have done, had things unfolded a little differently. With last month’s conviction of Derek Chauvin leading commentators to argue that, in the end, the system does work, it is worth remembering the direction that this case was taking before it sparked a global movement.
